With the increasing popularity of handheld messaging devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal digital assistants, etc., consumers are looking for a more "multimedia" experience. Music is a popular form of multimedia. Therefore, it is desirable to embed musical content into alphanumeric messages so that the music can be heard while reading the messages. However, existing formats such as mp3, wav, midi, etc., require sending massive amounts of data to devices which may not even be capable of reproducing those sounds.
Accordingly, it is desirable to encode musical content into a format that is flexible, efficient and which permits almost any device to reproduce basic musical compositions. This is accomplished by embedding musical content into an alphanumeric message so that the music can be played when the message is read or to alert a user that a message has arrived. Further, it is desirable to provide a method where both pitch and duration changes can be made in a single 7-bit character.